The private Embraer? Anyways Boeing and Embraer are not even direct competitors so I don´t know what straws you are trying to grasp.

As for Facebook, it is great tool for marketing. I know people who have benefited through it. Privacy settings are actually set by the user. Individuals also choose to create a profile. Sounds kinda like freedom. Again, I don´t know what you are going for here either.

Just because Brazil is in an upswing doesn´t mean everything in Brazil is the best in the world. You can be proud of your country without being naive and nationalistic.

Dilma was a member of a marxist guerrilla group when she was just 19 years old in 1970, the worst year of the military dictatoship, She was badly tortured, but never betrayed her colleagues, I am told. She never used violence or participated in armed actions. Serra belonded to Ação Popular, some whose members later entered the armed struggle - but we should not hold him responsible for that.

Fernando Gabeira, the Green Party candidate for the governorship of Rio state, participated in the 1969 kidnapping of the US ambassador and is still barred from entering the US, I believe. He quickly supported Serra in the second round.

Those were awful years under the military dictatoship. It is a bad smear to compare Dilma with the golpista Chavez - who tried a coup d'etat against a democratically-elected governtment in 1992.

Thinking further, look at Northern Ireland where the former IRA guerilla _leaders_ are now participating in multi-party government and democracy. Food for thought?

@Columbo I fail to see how your comments are anything else then failed neoliberal economic dogma and anedoctal evidence. For starters, you complain about public debt but it has been falling for the whole Lula government, while it grew at an amazing rate during the Cardoso years, which I suppose best represent your views of small government.

Of course Lula´s government has many weak spots, I do agree with you on the ridiculous intrest rates, taxes, and much more. But these are complex tasks of which tardiness does not disqualify this government.

How about being an Embraer employee? Do you know how many 747s boeing was able to place in the market? I believe for 2010 the number is zero.
Have you bothered finding out how the American Boeing engineers are doing right now?

Right now, Brazil has the highest technology is banking security software for example, IN THE WORLD.

To me facebook is an example of technology that can only help repressive regimes. I believe it is the sad consequence of the patriot act. Nowadays, Americans gave it up on trying to protect their privacy. Thanks to facebook, data about individuals will be preserved for eternity. Millions of users will likely have to change their name.
Millions of others will lose job opportunities for the things they said 10 years before. This is the world that America is building.

On the other hand, South America is becoming the freest region in world's history.

Like much of South America, Brazilian government is hijacked by criminals. The Dilma / Serra debate that captured the imagination of the nation is a ruse. Neither candidate or party would do what needs to be done; reduce government, simplify and reduce taxes, open markets to competition, reduce interest rates, educate the labour force and focus on the environment. The PT will indebt the country a little faster than the PSDB and engage in populism; the PSDB would have allowed protected capital interest a disproportionate share of wealth gains and engaged in a fawn to corporates.

As a result, Brazil will inevitably fall from it's position of grace. When it does, it will ostensibly be linked to the policies of the preceding governments. In fact it will have been a consequence of a total failure of government. Anyone who tries to implement the required reforms to move Brazil to the next step would not last a minute in Brazilian politics. Watch Tropa de Elite 2 to understand the problem.

It is sad to see that even here the south-north prejudice we have in Brazil is expressed. A poorer region can still vote to their intrests, and looking at the numbers this magazine gave us these 8 years, it´s easy to see why someone from the now less poor north is voting red.

About the governing issue, the map is a bit misleading. Rio Grande do Sul was a practical tie, and the governor there is a close Rousseff ally. As is the governor of Espírito Santo. Congress is now much more situation alligned, and the "tea party" opposition by Mr. Serra is bound to give room to a milder, more responsible opposition by Aécio Neves, the probable next presidential candidate.

What is clear by now is that this was a government like that of Clement Atlee or Roosevelt, and just like NHS and Social Security Lula´s agenda (Bolsa-Família, generous minimum wage increase, etc) is seen now as mandatory for any presidential candidate, and is even considered "export material" for Africa and Asia, as efficient poverty reducing mechanisms. To the despair of those who would like to dismiss those policies as: 1)populist demagoguery, or 2)Mere continuation of Mr. Cardoso policies.

The two parties have now no great programmatic differences, as PT during 8 years embraced all the policies of PSDB. The only such differences are an increase of the State participation in the Economy and the effort to create large private companies by hand-outs of public money.

The major differences lie in a widespread tolerance, by the Lula government, of corruption, together with fisiological alliances (there are 22 parties in the Congress, and only 3 are in opposition), illegal financing of political campaigns and open disobedience of the electoral law by Lula.

Obviously Dilma, being in practice the Prime-Minister of Lula, agreed with everything. The open State support to her has weakened her mandate and created very bad feelings, as she and Lula strengthened an also rag-tag opposition alliance. Now she must rely even more on the support by the fisiological alliance of 15 parties. On the positive side she will not be able to tamper with laws as Lula had done, as she has not his histrionic bad-boy/poor-boy charisma.

Lula got away with many contradictions, like strongly supporting Chaves and Bush. Or talking like an ultra-leftist against the bourgeois freedom of press and the white/capitalist/well educated elites, but ensuring handsome profits for the banks through the highest interest rates in the world and lebnding the workers pension fund money to large companies at low interest rates. Dilma is not such a good actor, she had a pitiful performance, enmeshed in a meaningless discussion with Christian churches about aborption, where she had to make a humble 180 degrees turn around. Even so,that was funny, like the emperor in Canossa, she went to our largest cathedral in Aparecida and publicly repented of supporting changes in our medieval aborption laws...

Your chart illustrates a sort of virtual Mason-Dixon line, with everything south of Bahia and to a lesser extent Minas Gerais breaking more against Lula than for Serra. North of the line, the gross over-representation for the region in the Legislature ensures (a) a gravy-train, (b) its inherent corruption and (c) perpetuation of the old 'Colonel' culture that returns representatives more concerned about feathering their own nests at public expense than trying to drag the region out of the 19th century.

Lula broke with it to the extent of getting a bigger voice for unions, the key to his thought processes, but not to his political instincts, which are outstanding. The odds on Dilma of surfing on his wave, particularly without his 'jogo de cintura' (roughly, waist-wiggling) don't stack up. Brasil deserves better and may yet get a chance to start reclaiming it when it becomes evident that she's more of the same, but without the charisma.

As we can see in the map, Serra won in most states where the money comes from, either in industry or agriculture and where the people are more high-educated, perhaps with the exception of Rio and Minas.
It shows who really determined the election for president once again in the country were the voters who are more dependent on government for some kind of subsidy.
Lets hope next time brazilian voters will be more wise.

In 1998 I didn't like that guy in Venezuela who got elected after attempting a coup back 6 years before. "He's not a friend of democracy and he won't be any good" I said... while everybody else was celebrating.

And here we are 12 years later and I see myself in the same position. This woman was the member of a marxist guerrilla and has used violence in the name of ideals. It might be beautiful for some, but I think this is not gonna end well. But don't worry. Maybe I'm wrong and you can continue celebrating.

As usual, the media fails to mention that a mere 4 hours after polls closed, 100% of the votes were accounted for, including for governor of several states, and the winners officially announced, thanks to a fully computerized election system. What a contrast with most European countries, which still vote on paper ballots shoved into cardboard boxes, not to mention the US (remember Florida), which still seems to have difficulties counting votes.

What an irony. Dilma and PT voting performance closely resembled the military dictator’s far right party - ARENA - during seventies few years before dictatorship (and ARENA) vanished. Like now, govern approval were much stronger in the poor low educated Northeast (NE) while the opposition (MDB the opposition ragbag of those days) wound win in major cities, much like one of its offspring, the PSDB, did now.

NE people tend to vote govern (conservatives - keep their benefits whatever they are) while major cities (more informed, educated and with much bigger GDP and tax share) tend to swing to opposition influenced by federal govern corruption scandals, a sad trend for those parties in Brazil that controls the huge federal budget for sometime

Finally an emerging giant with vibrant democracy. Dilma might have impotant message to all those Putins and Xi Jinpings. Concerning the BRIC, India is also democratic but its inner conditions (poverty, corruption, civil wars, Kashnir etc.) is less convincing. So let Brasil "civilize" the BRIC.
Turkey and Indonesia may join.